Morgan used to say that his happiest days were the ones spent writing. And he did a lot of writing, much of it for the Tribune, where he worked from 1950 until 1992 in positions including columnist and editor. He continued writing at The San Diego Union-Tribune, the newspaper created from the merger of the San Diego Union and the Tribune, and later for the nonprofit Voice of San Diego, a news and opinion website that he helped start.

“If it’s important and it happened — or is about to happen — in San Diego, odds are it will show up in Morgan’s column first,” San Diego Magazine noted in 1981.

Neil Morgan

Part cheerleader, part critic

He arrived in San Diego via the Navy and embraced the city as if it were a family heirloom. Part cheerleader and part critic, he was an elegant writer who had the discerning eye of a watchdog.

“San Diego ranks as the Western city most transformed by its waves of settlers,” he wrote in the 1963 edition of his book “Neil Morgan’s San Diego.”

“In quite suddenly becoming a metropolitan area, San Diego has accepted the missile, the atom, the laboratory, the campus and even a casual California sophistication, which World War II visitors thought foreign to its nature.

“Her incomparable zoo, her bays and sea, and Mexico are as alluring as ever. Everywhere there is freshness, leisure, an air of gentleness, a benign dignity that seems to say: we put living first,” he wrote.

He began working for the San Diego Daily Journal in 1946 and became a city columnist in 1948. When the Journal was absorbed by the Evening Tribune in 1950, he brought his popular “Crosstown” column to his new employer and achieved a reputation as one of the most respected and visionary voices in the region.

A series of columns in 1952 outlined how reputed mobster Frank Bompensiero used bribery and conspiracy to obtain a San Diego liquor license.

Morgan had the foresight to identify Torrey Pines Mesa as an emerging hub of international research and biotechnology. In 1981 he proposed the inclusion of the contiguous Mexican community as part of the San Diego region.

“He was criticized for being heretical; now that notion is commonly accepted,” said Karin Winner, former editor and vice president of the Union-Tribune.

Through the years Morgan’s columns earned many honors, including the prestigious Ernie Pyle Award for human interest writing.

In 1982, as editor of the Tribune, he took up the matter of then-Municipal Court Judge Lewis Wenzell, who was prosecuted for soliciting prostitutes while serving on the bench.

When the case ended in a mistrial and Wenzell refused to resign, Morgan published a recall petition in the Tribune and collected almost 40,000 signatures, enough to qualify for the ballot. Before the election could take place, Wenzell resigned.

Years later, Wenzell got his revenge with a hoax. An April Fool’s Day letter in 1985 contained a tip that Wenzell was writing a risque book about the local judiciary. Morgan ran the item, not knowing it was a plant from Wenzell himself. Two days later Morgan apologized to his readers for being duped.

Collaborator, teacher

In November 2000, he was recognized with the first Chancellor’s Medal awarded by UC San Diego.

“Neil has taught us that, when you live in a region blessed by nature and circumstance, you have a duty to safeguard those blessings,” said Robert C. Dynes, who was UCSD chancellor at the time.

Morgan authored or co-wrote a dozen books, many with San Diego themes. His books include “The California Syndrome,” “Above San Diego” and “Westward Tilt,” a social history of migration into the American West that has become a standard reference.

He and his wife collaborated on several magazine articles and books, including “Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel,” an authorized biography of writer and illustrator Ted Geisel.

“We were blessed because we were married almost 50 years and had the joy of respecting each other, loving each other and writing together,” his wife said.

Morgan also won awards as a travel writer, twice receiving the grand prize of the Pacific Area Travel Association.

“As an editor, Neil taught me how to write,” said William Osborne, U-T San Diego editorial editor. “As a writer, he accepted editing better than any reporter I ever worked with. He was class, as a journalist and as a man.”

Sailor to Mr. San Diego

He was born Feb. 27, 1924, in Smithfield, N.C., the youngest of four children of a Southern Baptist minister and his wife. He graduated from Wake Forest University in 1943 as a Phi Beta Kappa and worked at the Raleigh News & Observer before joining the Navy.

He adopted San Diego almost instantly when the Navy brought him here in 1944 “as a pimply-faced ensign,” as he recalled later.

At war’s end he decided to stay. After working at the San Diego Daily Journal, he joined the San Diego Evening Tribune as a columnist in 1950 and added travel editor to his duties in 1975, a post he kept after being made associate editor in 1977. In 1981 he became editor of the Evening Tribune, which was renamed The San Diego Tribune in 1989.

Morgan said his goal at the Tribune was to mold it into “the most sophisticated country daily in America, balancing important news and analysis with tidbits that color small-town life.”

He was editor in 1987 when the Tribune won its second Pulitzer Prize for editorials written by Jonathan Freedman on U.S. immigration policies. The paper had won its first Pulitzer in 1979 for coverage of the PSA plane crash in North Park.

Former Chamber of Commerce president Lee Grissom credited Morgan’s column with encouraging the creation and community acceptance of UCSD and with pushing the development of the region’s biotechnology industry.

In 1988 he was given San Diego State University’s Fourth Estate Award as an outstanding figure in journalism, and the keynote speaker was his old friend Walter Cronkite, the former CBS TV news anchor.

When Morgan was named “Mr. San Diego 1999” by the San Diego Rotary Club, former California Gov. Pete Wilson presented the award and called him “a loving but uncommon scold to San Diego.”

“In an interesting duality of roles, he has been San Diego’s chief cheerleader, the very halcyon of optimism; he has also been the critic of San Diego, who insists that we still do better," Wilson said.

At the 1992 merger of the morning and afternoon papers into the Union-Tribune, Morgan became associate editor and senior columnist. He was fired in 2004.

He became a regular commentator on the local National Public Radio station KPBS. In 2004, he became co-founder and senior editor of voiceofsandiego.org.

Voice of San Diego CEO Scott Lewis called Morgan a friend and mentor.

“He sort of shifted the conversation about journalism and how a journalistic organization can be built,” Lewis said Saturday. “Now there are literally dozens of organizations around the country that have followed his model.”

Lewis said Morgan often sent the staff emails “encouraging us to be controversial, to care about San Diego’s health and prosperity. They were always written so poetically. Short, simple and powerful.”

Judith Morgan said her husband had requested years ago that no public services be held at his passing.

“He said, ‘I have been so honored by San Diego and San Diegans,’ ” she said.

She said her husband had been ill for some time, but enjoyed visits from friends, watching sports and listening to her read the paper.

“His spirit was extraordinary,” she said.

She suggested that any donations made in his memory go to universities or libraries.

“Those were his two passions,” she said. “He was extraordinarily proud of UCSD and the Central Library.”

Morgan loved to travel, but for him, San Diego was always home. He wrote in an October 2003 column:

“On the beach where I walk, winter sidled in yesterday morning, gray and chill. At high water’s edge, I flipped up my collar as three-foot waves rumbled around my legs. Two spaniels, gloriously freed of their leashes, raced in and out of the surf. Up the beach, kayakers were putting cautiously out to sea. On the horizon, black bobs of surfers bobbed up and down in their snug ocean cradles.